Author: John A. Ross

Every place you live this side of paradise has its associated problems. We have at least two problems about our Sechelt place. First, the time we can live there each year is as yet far too short. And second, every fall we have to say farewell to it and leave….

We weren’t the only people who had discovered that the Sechelt area is a beautiful place to live. Cabins and houses soon began to appear here and there along the shore and back up the hill in the woods. Every time a new family took up residence, a new boat…

After a few summers of roughing it in tents at Sechelt, we began to consider providing a little more personal comfort and convenience for ourselves. A long hard day of slugging it out at the rocks, and my weary bones called for better support than the rolling ridges and billowing…

One afternoon high up on the beach I found a feather—a big feather, sixteen inches long in the white shaft and an inch wide in the vane. This brownish grey dun-colored feather had fallen out of the air. Neither tide nor wave had washed it ashore. What great bird had…

kay and I were sitting at the dying embers of a camp fire. It was one of those unbelievably quiet, summer nights at Sechelt when the starlit sky so surpassed our powers of expression that a silence of awe seemed appropriately eloquent. The Big Dipper was turning slowly like the…

When people who haven’t experienced the seashore come visiting at our Sechelt place, they are in for surprises. So many creatures that live in salt water are so strangely different from those in fresh water. Beachcombers can soon pick up a bucketful of fascinating treasures. Ramblers with an eye for…

After that last chapter, I hope you don’t imagine that our family is regimented by a lot of ironclad rules. At Sechelt, however, we do have one procedure that is rigidly observed and enforced by us all. After we’ve been using the boat, even though it has been pulled up…

When you are living in a mostly open shelter in the wilderness, uninvited guests such as squirrels, skunks, mice and bees are always dropping in for a visit. We don’t encourage this practice. We see that they all depart as quickly as possible. Some move more slowly than others, however….

Now I wouldn’t want you to think that during my years in British Columbia I did nothing much except summer-place kinds of things. These vacation times, however, were very special to me because then I could be with my family for long stretches of time without being called away to…

Even in high school I had been looking for an overarching conception of the world that would make sense of all my experiences. From time to time I would think that at last I’d found it, but always there was something that didn’t fit quite comfortably into my cosmorama. My…